In fact, the modern necktie - the staple of the business suit - has developed from a clothing item worn by Croatian mercenaries in Thirty-years' war. :)
Impressive sounding titles are for resumes, not egos. Most people here recognize the importance of explaining a product in as few words as possible so the people who want what you're selling stay for more, but for some reason, the same effect in hiring is overlooked.
If you want future jobs that carry the kind of responsibilities that a VP of Engineering, for instance, would typically handle, those jobs will be easier to get if that title's already on your resume. Forcing people to accept the title of "Irreverence Engineer" is forcing them to leave money on the table, and it's not a necessary feature of a culture that deemphasizes hierarchy.
Question: at a startup without titles, what do you think of fashioning one's own, within certain ethical limits?
It's obviously wrong to take the CEO title if you weren't the CEO (he or she might take it personally) or CFO if your job had nothing to do with finance, but I think a certain amount of leniency is allowed.
The biggest practical downside I can think of is if in checking references, your former boss gets called and has a reaction of, "John Doe, Senior Foobar? I don't think we even had a Foobar". So might be worth running it by whoever it is from the company you'd be likely to put down as a reference. I've met founders who are perfectly fine vouching for any reasonable title the employee wants to pick, though.
> The types of people that are going to come to us and demand large titles they can stick on their resumé now aren’t primarily concerned with building a company; they’re worried about building themselves.
which I see as a mistake. No matter how little I'm thinking about another job search, to knowingly sabotage it before it starts would be foolish. I can't gamble that your startup is going to see me through to retirement. (I've never worked for a fifty-year-old company; have you?)
Until you reach a certain scale titles are for the benefit of external parties. How much this matters depends on industry.
I can remember people handing me cards with titles of "Tech Dude" and "Web Boy" during the dotcom boom (although I'm yet to notch up a "Mad Hatter"). Wiser to eschew titles entirely.
It's a good article, but there's a flip side to not having titles: You risk confusing people who don't know much about your company yet.
To put it another way, titles aren't just about establishing a pecking order -- they are also about helping others identify who in your organization is responsible for what.
A journalist who wants to talk about your innovative technical solution wants to talk to the CTO (or VP engineering or whatever.) But if they instead unknowingly send an email to the person in the CEO role, that message might sit in the CEO's inbox for a while before getting redirected to the right person.
Or a legal threat could end up in a junior staff member's inbox, where the staff member might take the threat less seriously than a CFO would.
And the problem isn't just about where to send emails. What happens when you grow to a staff of six, three of whom are working on website development? Who is ultimately responsible for the application? The UI? The servers? Someone could ask questions and ultimately figure it out -- but it'd be a lot easier if they could just contact the "sysadmin", the "designer," and the "developer".
To be fair, the article does mention using "role based" titles when talking to the media. And I think that the author's real issue is with the "pecking order" aspect of titles. But forgoing titles altogether isn't the right solution.
Likewise, choosing something that completely obscures your role, like Mad Hatter, is like choosing random names for the variables in your code. You might think it's humorous to have $foo and $bar and $number in your code, but it doesn't help anyone who has to read your code later.
"You risk confusing people who don't know much about your company yet."
Haven't really seen that be a problem at our startup (the same one as the OA). Whether running a couple of usability tests over skype or meeting people at the adtech conference yesterday, people seem more interested in what the company is building than what our particular role is. And if need be, we'll often describe ourselves in terms they'll understand, like "designer", "usability test moderator" or whatever the situation warrants.
It's worth pointing out that the blog post title is Why WE'RE A Titleless Startup. It works in our situation because we have a small team (less than 10) and it's completely flat - we all report to John, our CEO. It wouldn't work if there's a strong caste system-style divide between certain groups (like founders vs employees, or employees vs contractors) or super-specialized prima donnas unwilling to wear many hats.
Read the book The Leader who Had no title by Robin Sharma. He philosophizes this concept and applies it to life in general. You don't need a title. If you do, you're not busy working enough.
My business card simply reads Without title under my name.
Think of it this way. When does another person come across your card? When you hand it to them.
If you are serious about building meaningful relationships with clients/vendors/strangers, a title on a business card should not define your role. You should.
The OA article comes off a bit like a bunch of teenagers complaining how their parents generation are a bunch of conformists so they're going to rebel by all doing their hair different. And then the teenagers all do their hair in exactly the same "different" way.
Then they get older, and realize, hey, most people's hair is like that because as you get older, most people don't care that much, so a sort of "style freeze" happens. Then, luckily, these people give birth to their own set of teenagers, and the cycle repeats.
If he doesn't understand the value of a job title, even in a small company, he just hasn't been in business long enough. Eventually he'll learn, "Oh yeah, those things really do have a purpose!". They help settle who has final say on decisions within a particular area. They help route questions to the right folks who can answer them or get them answered. It also puts an outside-facing name next to a certain slice of the business: forcing a person to "own" an area because if, say, an outside observer thinks that some company's marketing is done badly, it will reflect badly on the VP of Marketting, etc. Sure, inside the company, in the dark, when nobody else is around, you can have whatever silly titles you want, or even no titles at all. But if you really think titles are meaningless, you should take it to it's logical conclusion: renounce all use of personal names, location names, etc. Afterall, they are just titles, they don't mean anything. Oh yeah, that's right: they are useful. That's why they exist!
Two friends of mine did a startups some years ago. One technical guy and one business guy. The tech guys title was simply "technology" and the business guys title was "everything else".
It worked - everybody understood it immediately and it brought a smile to peoples face.
Isn't it better to optimize the titles, not just abandon them completely? One way would be having dynamic titles based on what you do: user identity coordinator, analytics specialist and keep it flat? Titles change when your actual role changes and if you leave the company it will be (even more) possible to meaningfully describe yourself in the CV.
Without titles, how do you ensure that you got a fair deal when you sign up?
(Assumption: If you end up with a "Director of Engineering" title, you can easily ask your peers, startup blogs, salary.com to determine the right mix of cash/equity.)
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 49.7 ms ] thread"Organizational Charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing"
http://www.blaisdell.com/powell/
Also, the modern business suit is heavily inspired by military command dress.
I've posted it to the front page to see if others are interested as well.
If you want future jobs that carry the kind of responsibilities that a VP of Engineering, for instance, would typically handle, those jobs will be easier to get if that title's already on your resume. Forcing people to accept the title of "Irreverence Engineer" is forcing them to leave money on the table, and it's not a necessary feature of a culture that deemphasizes hierarchy.
It's obviously wrong to take the CEO title if you weren't the CEO (he or she might take it personally) or CFO if your job had nothing to do with finance, but I think a certain amount of leniency is allowed.
> The types of people that are going to come to us and demand large titles they can stick on their resumé now aren’t primarily concerned with building a company; they’re worried about building themselves.
which I see as a mistake. No matter how little I'm thinking about another job search, to knowingly sabotage it before it starts would be foolish. I can't gamble that your startup is going to see me through to retirement. (I've never worked for a fifty-year-old company; have you?)
I can remember people handing me cards with titles of "Tech Dude" and "Web Boy" during the dotcom boom (although I'm yet to notch up a "Mad Hatter"). Wiser to eschew titles entirely.
To put it another way, titles aren't just about establishing a pecking order -- they are also about helping others identify who in your organization is responsible for what.
A journalist who wants to talk about your innovative technical solution wants to talk to the CTO (or VP engineering or whatever.) But if they instead unknowingly send an email to the person in the CEO role, that message might sit in the CEO's inbox for a while before getting redirected to the right person.
Or a legal threat could end up in a junior staff member's inbox, where the staff member might take the threat less seriously than a CFO would.
And the problem isn't just about where to send emails. What happens when you grow to a staff of six, three of whom are working on website development? Who is ultimately responsible for the application? The UI? The servers? Someone could ask questions and ultimately figure it out -- but it'd be a lot easier if they could just contact the "sysadmin", the "designer," and the "developer".
To be fair, the article does mention using "role based" titles when talking to the media. And I think that the author's real issue is with the "pecking order" aspect of titles. But forgoing titles altogether isn't the right solution.
Likewise, choosing something that completely obscures your role, like Mad Hatter, is like choosing random names for the variables in your code. You might think it's humorous to have $foo and $bar and $number in your code, but it doesn't help anyone who has to read your code later.
Haven't really seen that be a problem at our startup (the same one as the OA). Whether running a couple of usability tests over skype or meeting people at the adtech conference yesterday, people seem more interested in what the company is building than what our particular role is. And if need be, we'll often describe ourselves in terms they'll understand, like "designer", "usability test moderator" or whatever the situation warrants.
It's worth pointing out that the blog post title is Why WE'RE A Titleless Startup. It works in our situation because we have a small team (less than 10) and it's completely flat - we all report to John, our CEO. It wouldn't work if there's a strong caste system-style divide between certain groups (like founders vs employees, or employees vs contractors) or super-specialized prima donnas unwilling to wear many hats.
My business card simply reads Without title under my name.
Think of it this way. When does another person come across your card? When you hand it to them.
If you are serious about building meaningful relationships with clients/vendors/strangers, a title on a business card should not define your role. You should.
Then they get older, and realize, hey, most people's hair is like that because as you get older, most people don't care that much, so a sort of "style freeze" happens. Then, luckily, these people give birth to their own set of teenagers, and the cycle repeats.
If he doesn't understand the value of a job title, even in a small company, he just hasn't been in business long enough. Eventually he'll learn, "Oh yeah, those things really do have a purpose!". They help settle who has final say on decisions within a particular area. They help route questions to the right folks who can answer them or get them answered. It also puts an outside-facing name next to a certain slice of the business: forcing a person to "own" an area because if, say, an outside observer thinks that some company's marketing is done badly, it will reflect badly on the VP of Marketting, etc. Sure, inside the company, in the dark, when nobody else is around, you can have whatever silly titles you want, or even no titles at all. But if you really think titles are meaningless, you should take it to it's logical conclusion: renounce all use of personal names, location names, etc. Afterall, they are just titles, they don't mean anything. Oh yeah, that's right: they are useful. That's why they exist!
It worked - everybody understood it immediately and it brought a smile to peoples face.
Too bad it doesn't scale ^_^.
(Assumption: If you end up with a "Director of Engineering" title, you can easily ask your peers, startup blogs, salary.com to determine the right mix of cash/equity.)